


Bloody Awful Days

by avrelia



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Developing Friendships, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Pregnancy Scares, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 03:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18770071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avrelia/pseuds/avrelia
Summary: Mai and Ty Lee are in prison after the events of "The Boiling Rock" episode. Mai does the math and doesn't like it. Ty Lee befriends the warrior girls and drags Mai with her into new friendships. Female body functions as they do. Ming the nice prison guard from "The day of Black sun" makes an appearance. Zuko doesn't make an appearance, but his presence is still very much felt. I named the Kyoshi warriors and gave them a bit of characters, so they basically ended up being original characters.





	1. Day One

**Author's Note:**

> Written for May Maiko week 2019
> 
> Day 3: Blood
> 
>  
> 
> This story has been kicking me for a long time. I am glad it is done more or less it wanted to be done.

Could things get any worse? Deep down she knew it could, but was too exhausted to be afraid. Right now she didn’t want to think of anything at all. Or feel anything. Or care. Caring proved to be her downfall after all. 

To dissolve, disappear in the dumpy silent darkness surrounding her was the best option. She stared at the wall in front of her. Boring, depressing stone wall of her prison cell. Her hands kept searching for knives in the pockets. Alas. No knives for prisoners. Nails digging into palms to stop them from twitching. To fall asleep and forget about anything… but every time she closed her eyes, she saw him, felt lips on her lips, hands in her hands. Or that last stare through the locked door. Or that incongruous warm grin. Or that new confident serious look when he tried to explain why he had to… No, she couldn’t possibly close her eyes. What else she might have seen then. Fine, fine, she was caught in the trap of their mutual stupidity. He made his choice, she made her choice, she didn’t regret it. She just didn’t want to care anymore. 

It shouldn’t be too hard, to be in prison. Just stare at the wall and pretend that you are at home, in your room. No, don’t! wrong memories. All wrong. 

She was neither too important nor too dangerous to eat alone, so at lunch time she saw Ty Lee. She looked less cheerful than usual, and yet more cheerful than their situation warranted.

They didn’t talk much during their travel between prisons, both too shocked and depressed by the sudden change. But now it was a relief – to see each other. 

“How are you doing, Mai?”

“Contemplating the depths of my misery. Not sure if I wouldn’t be better off dead.”

“Sure, because your funeral would have been so much more fun.”

“I wouldn’t have to care.”

“I care.”

“Sorry, Ty Lee. I really am bad with talking right now.”

“And normally you are such a chatterbox.” Ty Lee sighed. “Fine. Have fun with your misery. We are here to have some bloody awful days. Let’s make the best of it.” She looked around the room. Most of the prisoners paid more attention to their food than to them. “Why do you think those girls are staring at us?” 

Mai followed Ty Lee’s nod and shrugged. “War prisoners. Earth kingdom girls. Probably fought us at some point.”

Ty Lee’s face lit up, “Oh, I didn’t recognize them without their makeup! Let’s go and say hi” She grabbed Mai’s sleeve and dragged her to the group of glowering girls who were obviously less happy to meet than Ty Lee.

 

“Hi! We’ve met before! I am Ty Lee, and this is Mai. She is always this sullen.” 

Mai rolled hey eyes and didn’t say anything at that introduction. 

“We know who are.” A tall, wide-faced girl said. “Where is your princess?”

“Somewhere out there, I assume. Last time I saw her she was fine. Oh! And your leader, what’s her name? She is fine, too!”

“Suki? How do you know?”

“I saw her at the Boiling Rock prison when she was escaping with prince Zuko. I fought her myself, but she escaped, so I assume she is fine. Unless they got caught after, of course. I have no idea what happened after.”

“You are making no sense whatsoever.”

“I know, I know! Mind-boggling, everything that happened! Mai, tell them!”

“I don’t really remember their leader.”

“Why would Suki escape from prison with prince Zuko? That can’t be true.”

Mai sighed and tried to combine all she knew together. “Prince Zuko… has joined the Avatar to help him end the war.” Saying it aloud felt strange, but somehow it helped to make sense of it for herself, “So he and his friend showed up at the Boiling Rock to help someone to escape. Maybe your Suki. Zuko got caught, so Azula and I and Ty Lee were notified, and we came there. They escaped, and Ty Lee and I ended up here.”

The tall girl frowned. “There is something missing here. It doesn’t add up.”

“Well, I can’t help you there.” Mai got her food and started eating it. She tried to identify what it was, than thought better of it. It’s not like there were choices in prison menu except to eat or not to eat. She heard Ty Lee starting to explain Other Things to the warrior girls, things didn’t want to think about it, let alone explain. 

She successfully disregarded all the conversations around her, reducing all the sounds in her head to some intermittent buzz, when a pat on her arm jerked her into reality. It was one of the warrior girls, small and wiry. “Hi, I am Yen, it was a really brave thing that you did.”

Mai shrugged and didn’t say anything. 

Yen continued, undeterred. “I think you’re ok, even if you are Fire Nation. I mean, it was weird to learn it all about your prince Zuko given that we only met him when he attacked and burned our village, but I guess people do change...”

Mai continued to not say anything, but the new girl decided to be her new Ty Lee and kept talking. “I know, first day of prison is pretty awful. The guards are… different. Some are ok, others can be mean, but I can easily defend myself, and I guess, you can, too. Or, you probably don’t even need to. Or maybe you do, and then you can totally kick their butts. Can you do it without knives though?”

Mai nodded, and Yen smiled. “You need to learn our fighting style, it’s really awesome.”

“It didn’t work against us, did it?”

“Well, no, but it’s still really good. And Ty Lee promised to teach us how to chi-block. Anyways, some female guards are really nice, especially when you need some extra help with hygiene.”

“Extra help?”

“yes, you know, once a month? Anyway, you probably won’t even need it because if Avatar is learning firebending now, he’ll defeat the fire lord very soon, and we all be out of here.” 

Mai stopped listening, because with the sinking feeling she realized she doesn’t remember when that time for extra help with hygiene was supposed to start. So many things had happened, and she lost the track of time, but now she was raking her brain trying to count the days. 

She needed to get out, the effort to maintain her nonchalant expression became unbearable. Mai mumbled something, tried to smile politely, and hastily removed herself to a dark corner. Soon enough all the inmates were returned to the cells and Mai could allow herself a moment of unmitigated panic. She was late, she was sure of it. More than four week had passed since her last time, and in all the mess and heartbreak of the past days she didn’t think of such mundane details. Even if she did think, what purpose could it serve? She thought she did everything right. The recipe for herbal tea that’s supposed to prevent those kinds of problems she learned at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls. Not during lessons, of course. Girls talked, they discussed stuff, they had older sisters. There were some strange and creepy discussions, in Mai’s opinion, but rather educational. She trusted it more than the official lessons. She also checked and re-checked the recipe and the rules as well as she could. It was not a momentous decision on her part. Still, a momentously stupid decision, as it turned out. Mai was sure her mother and aunt knew those recipes as well, but asking them was not an option. How does one come with such a question to one’s maiden aunt? Even such indulging and cheerful as Auntie Mura? 

She felt angry. Pacing the cell back and forth did nothing to abate the panic and only increased her anger. Mai tried to imagine being pregnant, carrying a droplet of royal blood inside of her. She hated it. She hated all the royal blood and all the people with it, spirits take them. Unexpectedly, Mai’s thoughts turned back, to the school days when it all started. It was a little scared porcupine lizard, running around their classroom, losing its needles trying to protect itself, sending girls into panic and loud screaming. Mai felt sorry for the little creature, but she couldn’t bear all the screaming, so she threw her knife at it. Mai wasn’t any good with knives then, but she started carrying a knife with her to school just to feel better around firebenders. So it was a random chance, maybe lucky, maybe not, that Mai’s knife pinned the porcupine lizard to the floor. It died slowly, jerking its limbs helplessly, as the brownish blood dripped from where the knife pierced it. That’s what got Mai noticed by princess Azula. Soon she became Azula’s friend, and started to get invited for playdates at the palace. Right now Mai felt definite affinity to the poor creature – pinned to the floor and slowly dying. She struck at the wall with her fist. It was painful, and stupid, and she didn’t feel better or even less angry. “Why do I need to feel anything?” Mai whispered to the wall. Wall didn’t answer. 

“Ok let’s think reasonably about the options: If I am pregnant, and the Avatar fails and I stay in the prison, the fact of pregnancy eventually will become obvious. I probably won’t live long after – nobody need royal bastards of disgraced princes running around. But at least I won’t have to worry about it.” 

The wall still was silent, but at least it didn’t disapprove, and Mai continued,

“Suppose Avatar wins, and I am out of prison, and Zuko is back. I guess I’ll have to talk with him, and he will insist on wedding and everything. And I’ll have a baby, and we’ll be even worse parents than ours. UUURGH! I really really don’t want to be a parent.”

Mai bumped her forehead at the wall. She didn’t feel better, but she didn’t feel worse, either. She heard – at school, of course - that there were options “to get rid of the problem”, but everything she heard sounded even more terrifying and she wouldn’t know what to do, anyway. Thinking about imminent death felt almost satisfying, in contrast. 

“No, I did everything right, it should work. It’s late, that’s all. I am fine, there is no baby, and I am not going to have sex ever again. Or until I am really old.” 

She kept pacing, occasionally kicking at the wall just to tire herself out. The heavy thoughts circled endlessly in her head without providing a smart solution or a respite until finally she felt she couldn’t make another step. Worn-out, she lay down and soon fell asleep.


	2. Day Two

Next morning, she woke up, still exhausted. There was no point of getting up, so Mai curled up, turned to the wall and lay there trying to think of nothing. Damp smell permeated everything around Mai, as if everything was slightly rotten. “May be, it’s me who’s rotten. May be I’ve been here for fifty years and just lost all the memory of it. Wouldn’t it be nice, to lose all the memory? Why do I need to remember that I am Mai, daughter of Michi and Ukano?”

After untold time spent trying to imagine herself a rotting corpse, Mai had to get up and leave the cell. It was time for lunch or for walk or for something – she didn’t care. She felt herself to be a ghost – moving silently between people who still wanted something. 

A hug stopped her. Ty Lee, of course. “Mai, is everything ok?”

“Yes, fine.” She wasn’t bound by logic any longer. She was a ghost of a rotting corpse. 

“Mai”

“Are you sure?”

“Stop whatever you’re doing and come sit with us.” Mai let herself be guided to the warrior girls. The girls seemed much friendlier than yesterday, Mai guessed, after whatever Ty Lee told them about their adventures that lead them here. They introduced themselves to Mai: the frowning tall girl was their second in command, Altynai, then there was Yen, Chon, Khanda and Bhun. Mai wasn’t quite sure she could tell them apart even though they looked all different without makeup. 

Ty Lee, seeing Mai’s moroseness, silently brought her a plate with some kind of food. Mai looked at her gratefully and nodded. Eating provided an excuse not to be involved in conversation. The conversation though went about comparing various fighting techniques and bending styles from a non-benders’ perspective, and Mai caught herself listening with interest and jumping to correct a mistake or another. 

Then Ty Lee started explaining the chi-blocking to the girls, and Mai was surprised that her usually bubbly friend talked with amazing clarity on the subject. “How strange that I hardly know my best friend. Then it’s not really strange – I hardly know anyone any longer...” She listened with great interest along with the Kyoshi warriors: while she had some idea how blocking of chi works, she had no idea about theory and why it works, and Ty Lee explained it in a simple, easy to understand way. “She was never like that with us.” Was that also a mask, an armor, not unlike her own? Mai had a sudden thought to get up and hug Ty Lee, but figured it might scare her. 

When they needed someone for demonstration, Mai offered help.

Ty Lee looked at her. “The way you look now, nobody will notice a difference.”

“Is my aura too dingy?”

“You don’t have any aura at all.”

At the end, Ty Lee showed blocking chi on Yen, then the girls tried it all on each other. Mai’s eyes drifted around aimlessly, looking at other prisoners. There really were quite a lot of prisoners of war after the failed invasion – water tribe warriors, earth kingdom people… Suddenly Mai couldn’t believe her eyes. She turned to Altynai who was sitting next to her and whispered. “Did that guy just waterbend, or am I crazy?”

Altynai regarded her warily, then nodded. “Don’t tell anyone, please. If they knew there are waterbenders here, they’ll be moved to a special prison.”

“Yes, I know. It’s supposed to prevent waterbending and generally awful. I won’t tell. But they don’t look Water tribe to me, and I thought South water tribe doesn’t have any waterbenders left, except for Katara.”

“They’re from Earth kingdom, weird swamp folk. I didn’t know they exist, either.”

“Do you know if there are earthbenders here?”

Altynai sighed. “they’ve been identified and put into metal cells. These guys got lucky since nobody knew about them.”

Presence of unexpected waterbenders had interesting possibilities. Mai only knew about waterbending from fighting Katara. And that was certainly impressive. What could these guys do? She knew to what length Fire Nation went to prevent captured waterbenders from using their skills, meaning the regular prisons couldn’t hold them. She knew more about prisons than she ever wanted from her uncle. Maybe all that knowledge will be useful some day. 

Anyway, it was something to think about beside her despair. 

Ty Lee and the four Kyoshi girls seemed to be having the times of their lives trying to chi-block each other without guards noticing. Altynai stayed near Mai, deep in her own thoughts.   
“There is hope now that the Avatar will defeat the Fire lord soon enough.”

“Yes, Sozin’s comet comes in a week or two, the matter should be resolved then one way or another.»

«I’ve about it. The comet grants firebenders extra power, right? And what do they plan to do with it, I wonder.” 

Mai felt uncomfortable. She only have a vague idea about Fire lord’s plan (she mentally kicked both Zuko and Azula) and really didn’t want to say it aloud to an Earth kingdom girl. But Altynai continued staring at her, and Mai sighed. She knew deep inside her that her choice was made already, she just had to get used to it.

“I’ve heard something about burning down your Earth kingdom.”

Altynai turned away without any expression. 

“May be we should do something instead of waiting here for the world to end. If we can get out of the prison, and stealthily get into the palace...”

Mai grabbed the girl’s shoulder to stop her. “NO. It’s for the Avatar to solve this.”

“It might be too late, he might not be able to do anything, he is only a 12 year old boy!”

Mai whispered angrily, “I know you don’t trust me, but believe me, fire lords are not that easy to assassinate. If they were, we would have had much more colorful history. Your fighting is only good for defense and you have not idea what kind of fire power you’ll be dealing with. You’ve met Azula, and she wasn’t really trying hard, she certainly didn’t try to hurt or kill you. Yes, you can stealthily get into the palace, but honestly you won’t do any good there and lose everything. Fire lord is never merciful, and he might retaliate against all the other war prisoners. There is not way it doesn’t all end up in death, blood and burning flesh.”

“If the Avatar doesn’t succeed, we might have nothing to lose.”

Mai shrugged. The truth was, if the Avatar didn’t succeed, she might not have much to lose, either.

After long silence Altynai said, “We are not from the Earth Kingdom, by the way.”

“No?”

“Kyoshi island has been independent from the Earth Kingdom since Avatar Kyoshi created it.”

“She created an island?!” Mai had no idea it was possible.

“Well, she cut it off the mainland and moved away.” 

“Avatars have weird powers.”

“Yep. I guess we should expect something similarly crazy from Aang, but...”

«But we’ve actually seen Aang and that’s why we are both hopeful and concerned. Azula almost killed him, you know.”

“So, you are hopeful, too?”

“Apparently.” 

The fate of the world is a great distraction from personal problems, Mai noticed with satisfaction. When in the big picture there is blood everywhere, her own blood is not as noticeable. On the other hand, it’s still her blood and her pain she was feeling.

Back in her cell though she realized that her anger abated, a certain calm embraced her, and she was enjoying the feeling of weightlessness. Those idiots managed to break out from Boiling Rock, with her help. Maybe she could help herself, too. It would be nice to see Zuko again. And punch his stupid face. No. not punch. Maybe a little. Obviously, she not going to punch him, because she would really wanted to kiss him. Mai sighed. They got so good at kissing in a short time. True, they had nothing better to do. Just sit next close enough to touch, kiss and cuddle. And laugh at stupid jokes. Mai forgot that she could laugh before that. They hardly talked, even though they used to talk a lot, in previous lives. This time talking and listening became fraught with tension, and it was so much easier to pretend that we were so close, we didn’t need words. What a laughable mistake it was! She couldn't say anything, and he could only scream how angry and confused he was, and for all she wished to help him, only kisses seemed to work. Which lead to the bigger mistake…

“I also need to tell him, eventually, some day in the future, that I love him. It’s kind of ridiculous that Azula, Ty Lee, and half of the prison guards know that and he doesn’t. I mean, normal people would have guessed by now, but we are dealing with an oblivious dork here.” Mai smiled to herself, “He is my oblivious dork though.” 

 

This time she felt asleep still smiling.


	3. Chapter 3

Mai woke up and felt a giant wave of pain came crushing onto her, making her wish for a swift death. Than another wave unfurled in her belly and took her under. Mai tried to get up and felt a sticky liquid flowing between her thighs. Blood. She laughed hoarsely, loudly enough that the guard woman came closer and inquired:

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything’s fine.” Mai croaked, doubling in pain. “It’s a girl problem, you know, normal kind.”

“Oh, of course, my dear. I’ll bring something to help you.” 

The guard disappeared and soon came back with the bucket of clean water, rugs, new prison clothes and a tea set. Mai idly wondered whether the guard was really that nice or really smart about placing her bets carefully.

“Than you very much.”

“Clean yourself and have some calming tea; it will help with the pain.”

“You’re very nice. What’s your name?”

“Ming. But it doesn’t matter.”

“Thank, Ming, anyway.”

 

When she saw Ty Lee and the Kyoshi warriors, they immediately saw the change in her disposition. 

“Someone woke alive today.”

“And immediately wish they weren’t” Mai croaked with another wave of pain. 

“Are you ok?” Ty Lee caught her arm.

“Yes, it’s a normal thing, you know me.” Ty Lee did see her in those days before, but now she didn’t look quite satisfied with Mai’s answer. 

Chon, another of the warrior girls, regarded her with a smirk. “So yesterday you felt fine and looked like death. Today you are in pain, and yet look almost happy. Which means you were afraid the pain and blood won’t arrive at all, which means...”

Ty Lee inhaled and whispered “Mai, you didn’t!”

Mai tried to kill her with a glare and didn’t dignify that with an answer.

Khonda, another girl who was mostly quiet, said with the smile. “I think we need to share some Kyoshi knowledge. It’s not all about fighting, you know.”

Mai looked at her with her best bland face. “I know. Was a bit worried whether it worked, that’s all.”

“Even better. Then we can exchange the knowledge, for purely educational purposes. Rich snooty Fire nation girls versus girls from nowhere. Would be fun!” Her grin was at the same time militant and cheerful and Mai found out that she was grinning back to Khonda. “Well, it’s not like we’re going anywhere.”

“First lesson, then!” Chon announced. “Laughter is a great at pain relief. I know this bloody hilarious story, listen...”

It really turned out a bloody hilarious story. And then there was another one, and another one… And the days passed, still bloody awful, but much less painful.


End file.
